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I have just returned from vacation. Other than some “Words with Friends”, it was pretty much tech-free. Now I am ready to dive into the new year.

I missed a great #langchat while I was gone. If you are a World Language teacher, you should get involved in our Twitter chats. They are Thursday nights at 8pm. A moderator shares the topic for the night and guides us in that topic. They do a great job. At the bottom of this post I will share my tricks for participating in a Twitter chat.

The topic I missed last week was “Greeting and Getting to Know One Another”.

The first week is a challenge for me. I have mentioned that there is not much content that happens and not much Spanish speaking in my blog post “Flipping the First Week of School”. Nonetheless, it is an important time for establishing connections and procedures.

Here is the link to the 2012 #langchats. There are some great topics.
Here are some of my favorites posts from the “Greeting and Getting to Know One Another” chat:

* @dr_dmd and @ZJonesSpanish both like to put music on in the classroom and greets their students at the door with a handshake and a smile.
*@dr_dmd likes using an activity he calls “Hand it to You” where he has students draw an outline of their hands and write one piece of information on each of the fingers. Students then pair up to interview each other before passing their hand tracing to next person. At the end of the exercise, all the hands are collected and displayed together as a “quilt.” As @dr_dmd put it, the beginning of the year is the time to establish a culture of community and collaboration in the classroom. Hmmm…. maybe this would be a way to share what life’s principles we excel in….*@Marishawkins and @tonitheisen talked about making Facebook and Twitter-themed bulletin boards on which students can “post” and “tweet” – both fun and relatable for their generation!*@Elisabeth13 always shows her students a funny target language commercial or video at the end of the first day of class; she wants them to leave laughing.(This is one of my favorites)*@SECottrell polls her advanced students to find out what they are interested in doing and learning so that she can tailor assessments to their motivation.*@Musicuentos suggested an activity to familiarize students with proficiency levels and to help students gauge their own. A description of the activity can be found here:http://t.co/PXj4ieor If students understand proficiency levels, they will better understand teacher expectations. As @tmsaue1 reminded us, teachers can take the secrecy out of language learning starting day 1!

I hope if you have already started school, that it is going well. Michigan has a state law that prohibits school from starting before Labor Day. I will need every day left to get ready.

If you have never participated in a Twitter chat, there are some tricks I have found:1. Open up the site “Tweet Chat“. Type in the hashtag you would like to follow (#langchat). You will do your posting there. Tweet Chat automatically adds the hashtag for you. If you do not use Tweet Chat, you will have to remember to add it.2. When someone shares a link, do one of two things. Either mark it as a favorite so you can check it out later; or right click on the link and open it. You will miss a lot of posts in the chat if you look at it too long, so check it out later. Leave it open in a new tab.3. Make sure you favorite posts you want to come back to.4. Follow people who share great ideas. You can always unfollow them later.
5. Participate! Ask questions and share your ideas.

Twitter is one of the best PLNs anywhere. I hope if you haven’t been involved with the chats that you will begin.

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I only began tweeting about one year ago. As the kids tell me now, I thought it was just to say that you were at Shamrock’s having an ice cream cone. They don’t see the usefulness of it now as I didn’t then.

That changed when I began following teachers and educational technology experts. I am not very good at keeping up with them, I don’t regularly monitor my account. When I do check in I always have some great links and programs to check out.

My favorite thing to do with Twitter is the #langchat at 8pm on Thursday nights. I have missed it the last couple of weeks because of our school play, so I am very excited to return to it this week. It is so well organized with a topic for the night that the monitors keep us focused on. The summary email and archive are the true treasures. They can be found on this wiki. Besides the Thursday #langchat, I search the hash tag occasionally and see some great resources.

I did learn that it is best to use “Tweet Chat” for the Thursday night chats. It automatically adds the has tag, which occasionally I would forget in the excitement. It also makes the chat appear on a larger screen so I can see more of the conversation.

I do give points to my students for tweeting. It is an option on their homework page for the week. I just have them use the hash tag #bccsp so I can search for them.